


Summer at Stratford

by thebasement_archivist



Category: The X-Files
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1998-07-31
Updated: 1998-07-31
Packaged: 2018-11-20 16:55:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11339556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebasement_archivist/pseuds/thebasement_archivist
Summary: Note from alice ttlg, the archivist: this story was originally archived atThe Basement, which moved to the AO3 to ensure the stories are always available and so that authors may have complete control of their own works. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in June 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address onThe Basement's collection profile.





	Summer at Stratford

**Author's Note:**

> Note from alice ttlg, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [The Basement](http://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Basement), which moved to the AO3 to ensure the stories are always available and so that authors may have complete control of their own works. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in June 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [The Basement's collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/thebasement/profile).

 

Summer at Stratford by Nancy

Mon, 23 Feb 1998

* * *

Summer at Stratford  
by Nancy  


That summer we rented a cottage near Stratford. For obvious reasons, neither of us wanted the bustle of London. Alex and I called a cease-fire, a truce in the battle to give sorrow and regret occasion and, then, to let it go. If we could not, our hearts would imprison us in a constant February, a chain-link fence around frozen soil, where the dead will stack in towers past the point of grieving. Love, oh love, my beloved enemy. We have stumbled into a no-man's land where all our love is streaked with grief, and all our grief shot through with a terrible love. This mapless place with its subtly different language for which we have no dictionary; verbs which have no future tense.

The summer was hot, one of England's rare heat waves with the green fields turning ochre and sienna gold under the amber sun. The heat pulsed across the landscape, matching our internal temperature. I wanted to show you my Oxford, the Euclidean perfection of its buildings only matched by austere beauty of your mouth. I shared your delight at the villages -Stow-on-the-Wold, Chipping Norton - as we wandered up and down back lanes, stopping to chat about gardens, roses, the vegetable crop and how big the zucchini would be this year. As the heat began to beat down, we would return to the cottage and sleep, fitfully. Later, waking in the cool of early evening, we would be somewhat rested but hungry, needy. "Travel gives me an appetite, " and you look at me shyly, with lashes masking the gleam in your sea-changeable eyes. "Shall I make you an omelet?" I tease breathlessly, knowing what comes next, savoring the moment. You turn toward me, urgent, longing, your erection already springing from the soft bush between your legs. I enter you, sucking hard on your nipples. Sometimes you want to be on top, and holding me by my hips, move me until you come, your head thrown back, crying soft and huskily. In the brief coolness of early morning, you wake me with an erection and push into me from behind. As I climb out of bed, you reach for me again, and I finish on the floor, bracing myself with one hand outstretched against the wall. That whole summer we seemed to lock into each other at every opportunity, with my back again the kitchen door, on the dining room floor, with your legs wrapped around me in the stairway. We move like dancers, in a series of endlessly varied improvisations. We are composing together a rich music, part fugue, part pavane, part dirge.

I want to touch you, to feel the angles of you, the tension beneath the skin from the sharp curve of your ribs to the slight roundness of your belly. I run my tongue over the hill of your stomach, from pubic bone to pubic bone. My hands caress your hips, seeking to feel through skin, tendons, bone, the hidden marrow of your architecture. I draw my hand up the inside of your thigh, smooth, muscular, turning neatly toward your buttocks. Your skin is ivory , turning slightly golden in the summer sun. Your pubic hair is medium brown and I stroke it lightly, feeling the wry curls tickle my palm. You are still, watching me, only the flickering lids under the curve of eyebrow betraying your own tension and desire. Slowly I begin to lick you, and you come alive. I take your penis in my mouth, sucking. The head gets large, and I begin to taste you, faintly acrid and saline, the taste of the sea. The base of your penis is wide, the tip engorged and throbbing. You arch toward me and touch my hair, my cheek.

A stream ran down at the base of the hill in back of the cottage and the tangled wilderness of the garden gave us privacy. When we tired of pub lunches or what you laughing called "our so-called cooking," we would picnic at the foot of the garden, eating apples, pears, ham, cheese, wine. Half-dozing on the bank of the stream, it seems to me that we have stepped out of the stream of our lives and that this moment must be happening in another country. I want to stop time, to make it stand still, to have this moment and no other - no past with its ghosts and unanswered questions, no fear about a future which neither of us can bear to contemplate. I lean toward you, wanting to give you pleasure. You are lying sprawled out, a half-erection straining against the fabric of your jeans. I watch the shadows flicker over your half-closed eyes, the sun warms the curve of your cheek, the hollow at the base of your throat, brushing your hair with umber and gold. I put my hand to your crotch and ask if there is anything I can do for you. You laugh, soft and low and press my hand harder against the thickening bulge, quickening the pace. I begin to kiss you slowly, savoring your lips still tasting of wine and Stilton cheese, seeing their soft fullness in my mind's eyes. Would that there were only this moment, this soft skin, this mouth.

I love watching you. Sometimes I think that would be enough; you are like water, light on water, flickering, ever-changing. You are beautiful and elusive, first indolent and relaxed, then muscular and taunt, smiling mysteriously, inviting me to endless vistas of delight.

You love my chest. Sometimes you nestle there, like a child seeking comfort. Other times you will slowly and indolently stroke my nipples, delicately caressing them with the soft tips of your fingers, brushing your hand back and over the musculature and hair from collarbone to navel. Sometime you are fiery and ardent, impatient, flicking the engorged tips with your tongue, curling them into tiny sensitive peaks with your fingers. I discover a new county of nerves which send fiery currents from your mouth on my mouth to my nipples to my cock. Once, as you tongued and caressed my nipples, the pulsing inside me burst into orgasm, surprising me with possibility. When I put my mouth against you, I ceased to exist. All else fell away. I had brought you and you me, to that point where we are most our mind, and most our body. Your prostrate pulsed against my fingers like a heart in a cave: mind, body, body, mind, over and over like some pure note borne down the long throat of a golden trumpet.

When you, I, we come, I feel that pleasure seduces us into knowledge of one another, of a kind that would allow us, if we were medieval, to hear the music of the spheres. Mortal and particular as we are, our images, like our cries, are earthly, human, but as real and beautiful as the sun outside, the English summer half gone, the space in which we move together, while London on the Thames melts, and pleasure answers pleasure, love calls to love, heart answers heart.

Nancy  



End file.
